Red
by Angelus1
Summary: Veronica is seven years and three thousand miles away from Neptune, yet somehow she's not at all surprised to see Weevil Navarro striding down the streets of New York City towards her.


Spoilers: None. 

Archive: Anywhere, just ask me first.

Disclaimer: Veronica, Duncan, Lilly, Weevil, Logan, Grandma Letti, and all other characters mentioned here are the property of UPN, Rob Thomas, Stu Segall, and Silver Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don't sue, because I have no money.

Author's notes: So, for some reason, it's now fanon that somewhere down the line, Veronica's going to grow her hair all the way out and live in New York, and Weevil's going to become a tattoo artist? I don't know how or why this came about, but as such this plotline has already been done several times. Nevertheless, it's such powerful imagery that I decided to take my own stab at it.

* * *

Veronica is seven years and three thousand miles away from Neptune, yet somehow she's not at all surprised to see Weevil Navarro striding down the streets of New York City towards her.

"Veronica Mars!" he calls loudly, the corners of his mouth tugged up into that boyish grin of his. He jogs the last few steps until he's right next to her, reaching for her, enfolding her in a warm hug. His arms are still thick and hard, bared to her in his trademark white wife beater; they're covered with new tattoos and she longs to stop and inspect them one by one. He's got a bit of a soul patch but no mustache, his hair buzz-cut but not completely gone. He looks good.

"Where have you been, _chica_?" he asks, squinting against the sun. There are little lines around his eyes and his mouth that remind her that they're not seventeen anymore, despite that fact that they're both in jeans and sneakers trying to pretend that they are. But where she was casual about her observation of him, Weevil takes no shame in giving her the once-over, his eyes sweeping up and down her form. She squirms uncomfortably, wondering what he sees when he looks at her long blonde braid and the simple gold band on her right ring finger.

"I've been right here,_ cholo_," she retorts. "What about you? You still causing trouble?"

"You know it." He peers at her for a moment, before holding out an arm and instructing her to "Come with me, I want you to see something." Veronica raises an eyebrow.

"Does that line actually work?" she asks, because the bantering back and forth is essential to their friendship - they would be nowhere without meaningless, innuendo-laced double entendres. Still, she lets him rest his palm at the small of her back and lead her down the direction he had been coming from.

"Only on the easy ones," he returns, and she elbows him in the stomach. They walk a block and a half in silence, until they're standing in front of a small tattoo shop. Veronica looks at the sketches hanging in the windows, backlit by the neon signs, and shrugs.

"I don't get it," she says, so he directs her attention to the print under the hours of business. The bottom line reads: _Owner: Eli Navarro._ "Wow," Veronica murmurs, and she actually is impressed. She figured out quite a long time ago that Weevil was far more intelligent than most people gave him credit for, but to see that he's actually done something with it earns him even more respect in her book. He's looking at her expectantly now, doing that head-tilt thing, and she knows that he's waiting for her to tell him what she's been doing with her life. Instead she asks "So does that mean I get a free tattoo?"

Weevil raises an eyebrow, but waves her inside nonetheless. He doesn't remind her that she once told him that she would never get a tattoo because there was nothing that wouldn't be too cliché. He thinks that maybe she's testing him, only he doesn't know what the right answer is, so he ushers her into one of the back rooms and closes the door. The room seems smaller as soon as he does - just him and her, in their own little world. Funny that he spent most of high school looking for opportunities to be alone with her, and now that he finally has one, it feels like there's miles between them instead of just a few feet. Veronica shifts from one foot to the other.

"Do you know what you want?" Weevil asks, and it's such a loaded question that they both smile sheepishly. No, she doesn't know what she wants. She's never really known.

"Why don't you decide for me?" she suggests, though they both know good and well what she's going to end up with. She perches on the chair and watches as Weevil takes a small scrap of transfer paper and sketches the outline of a simple white calla lily. This actually surprises her, because he knows that she prefers tiger lilies. But before she can say anything, he takes another piece of paper and draws a tiger lily. His brow is furrowed, the corners of his mouth turned down into a serious frown. Veronica wants to say something to assuage the thickening silence, but she doesn't dare break his concentration. When he's done, he glances over at her.

"Take your pants off," he says. Lying back, Veronica laughs.

"Damn, _vato_, you really have picked up some smooth moves," she teases. Weevil places the papers on the armrest of the chair, moving to stand in front of it.

"Am I gonna have to do it for you?" he questions, and at his words she gets that glint in her eyes, toeing off her shoes and socks, her smirk an obvious challenge. Mary mother of Jesus, Veronica Mars wants him to take off her pants. He really is getting a lot of adolescent fantasies fulfilled today. Struggling to keep his breath even, he undoes the button, the zipper, his knuckles brushing her soft flat abdomen. She lifts her hips, letting him slide the denim down her legs, revealing a tiny peach satin thong. Weevil groans inwardly - why did he expect her to be anything other than trouble? He disinfects the skin, having to inch down the strap of her underwear to do so, then carefully, transfers the two flowers onto it, one on her left hipbone and one on her right. His fingers linger far longer than they need to, but she doesn't seem to mind.

"Why both?" she asks. Weevil smiles.

"Because the tiger lily is your favorite and the calla lily is mine and she could never make a decision to save her life," he says matter-of-factly. Fingering the tattoo gun, he sees her glancing warily at the needle. "You sure about this?" he asks. Not that he expects her to say no - she's Veronica Mars, after all, and no matter what else has changed, he knows that she will never be one to back down from a challenge.

"Bring it on, Navarro," she says as he pulls up a stool next to her. From a cabinet, he pulls a small teddy bear.

"Wanna squeeze Lupe?" he offers. She grins.

"Nah. I'll just squeeze you." Ignoring all possible connotations of that comment, Weevil gets to work. He needs both hands to do his job, so she latches onto his thigh and squeezes rhythmically. She's still got a helluva grip, but the movements of her tiny little fingers are nothing compared to her eyes following his every move. He's unnerved by it, and asks her several times to stop, but she never does.

The needle digs into Veronica's skin, pricking and stinging. The pain dulls as her skin gets used to it, but once the calla lily is finished, he moves to the fresh patch of flesh on the other side of her body, and it starts anew. He works slowly and methodically, that look of intense concentration back in place. Veronica can't decide whether to look at that tattoo or him, so she goes back and forth, watching the sweat bead on his forehead, the orange shading bloom on her skin. Twenty minutes later, her legs are shaky and her breath is uneven and she feels like she just got through either running a marathon or having really hot sex. Weevil watches her with a grin as he sets the gun back in its holder.

"That good, huh?" he teases. Lots of people get turned on by the process, and he's not at all surprised that she's one of them.

"What can I say? You really lay the pipe right." Winking, she rises from the chair and crosses to the mirror to inspect his handiwork. Weevil busies himself with cleaning and putting away his tools - anything to keep his eyes averted from her bare ass swinging from side to side.

Veronica's head involuntarily tilts to the side as she studies the twin flowers. The calla lily's milky white color is only a few shades lighter than her actual skin, while the bright orange tiger lily stands in stark contrast, both stained an angry red. Their stems and petals curve towards each other; reaching for each other. Veronica chooses to ignore the symbolism.

"Come back over here, _chica_, I've gotta cover those," he says. She lays back down in the chair, lets him rub ointment on the raised red welts and cover them with saran wrap. He gives her a new jar of ointment, launching into a clearly memorized speech about keeping the area clean, but Veronica tunes him out, looking at the new tattoos on his arms that had caught her attention before. There's a pair of clasping hands, a portrait of one of his nieces, a few names she does not recognize, a motorcycle, his own larger version of the calla lily. Her eyes widen suddenly as she gets an idea.

"Can I give you one?" she asks. Weevil laughs.

"You don't even know how," he says.

"You'd be surprised at what I know how to do." She purposely makes it sound suggestive, even adding an eyebrow wiggle, but still Weevil looks doubtful. She stands and gives him the infamous head-tilt. "Don't make me flip my hair," she warns, hands on her hips. He grins then, and Veronica knows that she's won. She sits him down on the chair so that he's straddling the seat and facing the back. Not wasting any time, she pulls his shirt out of his jeans and lifts it over his head, disinfecting a small patch of bare skin high up near the right side of his neck. Be it anyone else, Weevil would probably be nervous, given that she has no pattern transferred to work from. But she clutches the gun confidently - she has indeed done this before. He longs to know where, but if she's not telling then he's not asking. Some things between the two of them will never change. Implicit trust is one of those things.

She climbs on the chair behind him, her still bare legs brushing against his denim-covered ones, and as she goes to work, his fingers trace up and down her thighs, drawing invisible meaningless patterns on her skin. He feels her moving in vaguely circular patterns, and he's desperately curious to know what she's drawing, but when she reaches for the colored ink, she admonishes him, demanding that he keep his eyes closed until she's finished. Though it kills him, Weevil obeys.

Veronica finishes quickly and rubs the ointment in, her lithe fingers making it feel more like a massage than a chore. She replaces the tattoo gun and they sit there for a moment of silence. Veronica drapes her arms around Weevil's neck and she embraces him in a backwards hug. Despite the fact that this is the first time in seven years that he's seen her and they're half-naked already, nothing about the situation feels odd. Being with her is the most natural thing he's ever known.

And that's probably why it hurts even more when she finally stands and reaches for her jeans. Weevil slips on his own shirt, once again distracting himself by cleaning up his workstation. There's no hiding the empty tub of red ink now, but he throws it away without comment.

He walks her out of the shop, knowing that this is probably the last time they're ever going to see each other again. Today was aberration; an almost unbelievable coincidence that Weevil wouldn't trade for anything. On the sidewalk in the fading afternoon sun he kisses her once, gently, his facial hair tickling her chin. It's almost anticlimactic at this point, compared to the intimacy of what they just shared, but still Veronica can't suppress an involuntary shiver. Weevil's fingers tighten around her waist and for a moment he lets himself consider the ridiculous notion of begging her to stay. But she backs away gently, shooting him that irrepressible grin that he fell in love with all those years ago before disappearing into the crowd.

He stares after her for several long moments before he finally turns around and slips back inside the shop.

He only lasts fifteen minutes before he retreats to the back room, pulling off his shirt again to inspect the mark that she left. Under the saran wrap is a crudely-drawn planet.

The red planet. Mars.

Weevil smiles.

And a BIIIIIG HUUUUUUUGE thank you to shealynn88 for her fic "Red Planet" that partially inspired this. Wish I could take credit for the brilliance, but I can't. I wanted to put this in the Author's Notes at the beginning, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise. I also wanted to put a link to the fic, but is evil that way, so if you visit her LJ, the first entry contains a fic index.


End file.
